
FRANKD.BU 



r\. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Uia]> Copyright No 

8heiu2£.5"i5^ 7 

UNITED STATES OF (lM.wK. 



J 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE APISTOPHILON 

(tov dri<776<ptXoy) 

A NEMESIS OF FAITH 



/ 



rJ^ 



BY 



FRANK D. BULLARD, A. M., M. D. 



CHICAGO 

R. R. DONNELLEY y SONS COMPANY 

1899 



Copyrighted, iSqg 
By frank D. BULLARD, A. M., M. D. 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 






SECOND COPY. 



TO 

ROBERT J. BELFORD 



THERE BLOOMS AN AMARANTH WITHIN THE SOUL 
WHOSE PLEASANT PERFUME FILLS THE GARDEN FULL, 
MEN CALL THE FLOWER FRIENDSHIP, AND FOR ITS SAKE, 
BELFORD, I DEDICATE TO YOU THIS SCROLL. 



THE APISTOPHILON 



Notes 



Recollection is the only Paradise from which we cannot be 
turned out. Richter. 



II 

And the night shall be filled with music 

And the cares that infest the day- 
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs 

And as silently steal away. 

Longfellow — The Day is Done. 



Ill 

Ah, happy years ! once more who would not be a boy. 

Byron — Childe Harold. 



Prologue 



When crooning winds soft in the gloaming blow, 
And lull to sleep with music sad and low 
The drooping eyelids of the drowsy day, 
'Tis sweet to dwell upon the long ago. 

II 

When dreamy reminiscence fondly cheers 
And to myself my former self appears, 
Then fade the fretful follies of the day. 
And fain I see the wraiths of yester years. 

Ill 

First skips the merry, laughing, careless boy. 
Whose untamed spirit bubbles o'er with joy. 
Who little recks the laws of creed or school, 
— Ah, his the heart that pleasure could not cloy! 

9 



NOTES 



IV 

** Orthodoxy, my lord," said Bishop Warburton in a whis- 
per, "orthodoxy is my doxy — heterodoxy is another man's 
doxy." Joseph Priestley — Memoirs. 



V 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all. 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 

Tennyson — In Memoriam. 



VI 

The man of wisdom is the man of years. 

Young — Night Thoughts. 



PROLOGUE 



IV 

Then firmly treads the self-sufficient youth, 
Sure he knows all, that all his thoughts are truth, 
Firm in belief that he is orthodox, 
— That blissful fallacy of faith, forsooth ! 



V 

Then comes the man that trusts the wider hope, 
Who tries to give his faith a broader scope. 
Who puts a mystic meaning to his creed. 
And yearns for light and in the dark doth grope. 

VI 

Last walks with care he of the riper age. 
Who studies life not from the printed page. 
But cons the lessons taught in Nature's school. 
For wisdom is the Mecca of the sage. 



NOTES 



VII 

To-day is not yesterday: We ourselves change; how can 
our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, 
continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful, yet 
ever needful; and if Memory have its force and worth, so also 
has Hope. Carlyle — Essays, Characteristics. 



72 



PROLOGUE 



VII 

The Disbeliever, Doubter, Devotee, 
— The Boy from all such quests and questions free- 
Are all myself, and oft in argument 
I hear them in the halls of Memory. 



13 



Notes 



And the earth was waste and void: and darkness was upon 
the face of the deep: and the spirit of God was brooding upon 
the face of the waters. And God said. Let there be light: 
and there was light. 

Genesis i : 2-3 — Revised Version, Marginal Reading. 

II 

He stretcheth out the North over the empty place, and 
hangeth the earth upon nothing. Job 26: 7. 

He sitteth upon the circle of the earth. Isaiah 40: 22. 

And God said. Let the earth put forth grass, herb yielding 
seed, and fruit bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed 
thereof, upon the earth: and it was so. Genesis i: i i. 

Ill 

And God created the great sea monsters, * * * and 
every winged fowl after its kind: and God saw that it was 
good. And God made the beast of the earth after its kind. 

Genesis i: 21-25. 

And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man 
became a living soul. Genesis 2:7. 

H 



The Apistophilon 



THE devotee: I 

Ere Time was born there was but empty space, 
And gloomy darkness filled the utmost place ; 
But when God's spirit brooded o'er the deep, 
Then shone the light made splendent by His Grace. 



II 

God hung the earth within the ambient air. 
And gave to land and sea their proper share,- 
Then sat He on the circle of the earth. 
And bade the barren dust a harvest bear. 



Ill 

Then fish and bird and brute of ev'ry kind 
Created were by fiat of His mind. 
And when He breathed the breath of life in man 
The conscious soul was then in him confined. 



IS 



NOTES 



IV 



After God had made all other creatures, he created man, 
male and female, ^ * * after his own image, having the 
law of God written in their hearts, and the power to fulfill it; 
and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the 
liberty of their own will, which was subject to change. Beside 
this law written in their hearts they received a command not to 
eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

Westminster Confession, Chap. 4, Sec. 2. 

V 

Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and tempta- 
tion of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their 
sin God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, 
to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory. 

They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin 
was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature 
conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordi- 
nary generation. 

Westminster Confession, Chap. 6, Sec. i, 3. 

VI 

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the 
unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in 
the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. I Peter 3:18. 



16 



THE APISTOPHILON 



IV 



His fated purpose better to fulfill, 
God gave to man that priceless gift, free-will ; 
Then broke he faith with God, to learn forsooth 
The sorrow-knowledge got of Good and 111. 



Ah, sad it is that in the Serpent's sting 
There lurked the virus of eternal sin 
To taint the blood of yet unfallen man ! 
Still worse that such should make us all akin ! 



VI 

Thanks be to God before whom nations kneel. 
That sent the Great Physician man to heal. 
Whose blood upon the cruel cross was shed. 
The poison from the wound of Sin to steal. 



17 



NOTES 



vri 



For if the word spoken through angels prove steadfast, and 
every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense 
of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? 

Hebrews 2:2, 3. 

VIII 

The common doctrine is, that the conscious existence of 
the soul after the death of the body is unending; that there is 
no repentance nor reformation in the future world; that those 
who depart this life unreconciled to God remain forever in this 
state of alienation, and therefore are forever sinful and miser- 
able. This is the doctrine of the whole Christian Church, of 
the Greeks, of the Latins, and of all the great historical Protes- 
tant bodies. Hodge — Systematic Theology. 

IX 

By the decree of God, for the manifestations of his glory, 
some men and angels are predestined into everlasting life, and 
others foreordained to everlasting death. 

Westminster Confession, Chap. 3, Sec. 3. 

As God appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, by the 
eternal and free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means 
thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected being fallen in 
Adam, are redeemed by Christ. 

Westminster Confession, Chap. 3, Sec. 6. 
18 



THE APISTOPHILON 



VII 

As man is freely offered a relief, 

How can he justly charge to God his grief 

If he neglects so great a remedy. 

And spurns that only balm for sin — belief? 

VIII 

Shall pampered Dives never feel a pain, 
Or Lazarus for virtue reap no gain ? 
A Hell of torment or a Heaven of bliss 
Will be their just desert, else life is vain. 

IX 

And when I think but for His saving blood, 
I, too, were doomed to meet the wrath of God, 
How can I pay the debt of love to Him, 
W^ho Calv'ry's thorny path for me has trod ? 



19 



NOTES 



X 

Now to condemn all mankind for the sin of Adam and 
Eve; to let the innocent suffer for the guilty; to keep any one 
alive in torture forever and ever: these actions are simply mag- 
nified copies of what bad men do. No juggling with *' Divine 
justice and mercy" can make them anything else. 

Clifford — The Ethics of Religion. 

XI 

This must be said to all kinds and conditions of men: that 
if God holds all mankind guilty for the sin of Adam, if He has 
visited upon the innocent the punishment of the guilty, if He is 
to torture any single soul forever — then it is wrong to worship 
Him. Clifford — The Ethics of Religion. 

XII 

Satan is a scarecrow set up by the clergy in the spiritual 
vineyard. Richter. 

Myself am Heaven and Hell. Omar Khayyam. 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE doubter: a 

Oh, shame upon that petty savage God 
That slakes His cruel anger in the blood 
Of His dear Son, the gentle Prince of Peace; 
'Twere better far the culprit felt the rod. 

XI 

Out on the foolish fable of the fall 
That thro' the lapse of One sin came to all. 
Or that into an unearned Heaven of bliss. 
We, meanly, thro' Another's merit crawl. 

XII 

Myself am Heaven or myself am Hell; 
As love or hate within my bosom dwell; 
My weak and trembling spirit to torment, 
No grinning demon waits the parting knell. 



21 



NOTES 



XIII 



The cruelty of a Fijian god, who, represented as devouring 
the souls of the dead, may be supposed to inflict torture during 
the process, is small compared with the cruelty of a God who 
condemns men to tortures which are eternal: and the ascrip- 
tion of this cruelty, though habitual in ecclesiastical formulas, 
* * * is becoming so intolerable to the better natured, 
that while some theologians distinctly deny it, others quietly 
drop it out of their teaching. Clearly this change cannot cease 
until the belief in Hell and Damnation disappear. 

Spencer — Principles of Sociology. 

XIV 

But neither nature nor the soul bears one trace of three 
divine persons. Nature is no Trinitarian. It gives no hint, 
not a glimpse of a tri-personal author. * ^i* * 'j']xc sun 
and stars say nothing of a God of three persons. 

Channing — Unitarian Christianity. 

XV 

And the Gileadites took the fords of Jordan against the 
Ephraimites: and it was so, that when any of the fugitives of 
Ephraim said. Let me go over, the men of Gilead said unto 
him. Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said. Nay, then said they 
unto him. Say now Shibboleth; and he said Sibboleth: for he 
could not frame to pronounce it right: then they laid hold on 
him, and slew him at the fords of Jordan. Judges 12:5, 6. 

22 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XIII 

The day of awful vengeance, day of Ire, 
The crackling furnace of a Hell of fire, 
That Coward-castle's threat, to live aright 
No longer minds intelligent require. 

XIV 

Fie on the church that curses with its ban. 
For simple unbelief a thinking man ! 
Because he holds that three times one are three 
And never one, is he forever damned? 



XV 

Then out upon the narrow selfish view 
That keeps God's blessings for a favored few. 
Who chance to know a dogma's shibboleth, 
And ev'ry Sabbath fill a church's pew. 



23 



NOTES 



XVI 

Christ came to give us a religion — but this is not all. By 
a wise and beautiful ordination of Providence He v\'as sent to 
show forth His religion in himself. Channing. 

When a man becomes a Christian the natural process is 
this: The Living Christ enters into his soul. Development 
begins. The quickening Life seizes upon his soul, assimilates 
around the elements, and begins to fashion it, according to the 
great Law of Conformity to Type; this fashioning takes a 
specific form. 

Drummond — Natural Law in the Spiritual World 

XVII 

Jesus founded religion in Humanity, as Socrates founded 
philosophy, as Aristotle founded science. No revolution will 
lead us not to join religion to the grand and intellectual and 
moral life at the head of which beams the name of Jesus. 

Renan — Life of Jesus. 

XVIII 

In a happy world there must be sorrow and pain, and in a 
moral world the knowledge of evil is indispensable. * * * 
We do not find that evil has been interpolated into the universe 
from without; we find that, on the contrary, it is an indispen- 
sable part of the dramatic whole. God is a creator of evil, and 
from the eternal scheme of things diabolism is forever excluded. 
FisKE — Through Nature to God. 
24 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XVI 

When to God's mind the time was fully ripe 
From human eyes the tears of sin to wipe. 
He sent to earth His Son, the Nazarene, 
To show the human race the perfect Type. 

xvn 

He placed the warlike eagle 'neath the dove, 
He put the Golden Rule of life above 
The sordid maxims of a selfish age. 
And showed to man the Father's tender love. 

xvn I 

The many evils of environment 
As purging fire to burn out dross were sent. 
For thus the gold of life must be refined. 
Nor were they e'er decreed for punishment. 



25 



NOTES 



XIX 



In religion 
What damned error, but some sober brow 
Will bless it, and approve it with a text. 

Shakespeare — Merchant of Venice. 



XX 

We know, and what is better we feel inwardly, that reli- 
gion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good, and 
of all comfort. Burke — French Revolution. 

XXI 

And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on 
Him, saying. Art thou the Christ, save thyself and us. But 
the other answered, and rebuking him, said. Dost thou not 
even fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 
And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our 
deeds: But this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said, 
Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom. And 
He said unto him. Verily, I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou 
be with me in paradise. Luke 23: 39-42. 



26 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XIX 

Who follows right in hope of greater gain, 
Who shrinks from Sin for fear of future pain. 
Who only bears the cross to wear the crown. 
Abstains for naught and labors all in vain. 

XX 

'Twere better to do right just for right's sake. 
And not because Fear bids the spirit quake. 
Yet offered prize or threatened pain ofttimes 
Of careless boys much better pupils make. 

XXI 

Did aught but selfish, craven fear induce 
The thief upon the cross to cease abuse ? 
Could he serve Hell and at the last repent. 
And ride to bliss on such a lame excuse ? 



27 



NOTES 



XXII 



We crave to have the supreme hours of our existence 
lighted up by thoughts and motives, such as we can measure 
beside the common acts of our daily existence, so that each 
hour of our life up to the grave may be linked to the life beyond 
the grave as one continuous whole. ** Bound each to each in 
natural piety." 

Frederick Harrison — The Soul and the Future Life. 

XXIII 

Far beyond the limits of our visible world are to be found 
atoms innumerable which have never been united to form 
bodies, or which if once united, have been again dispersed, 
falling silently through immeasurable intervals of time and 
space. As everywhere throughout the All the same conditions 
are repeated, so must the phenomena repeat. 

Tyndall — The Belfast Address. 

XXIV 

Above us, below us, beside us, therefore, are worlds with- 
out end; and this, when considered, must dissipate every 
thought of a deflection of the universe by the gods. The 
worlds come and go, attracting new atoms out of limitless 
space, or dispersing their own particles. 

Tyndall — The Belfast Address, 



28 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XXII 

Then let each hour but forge a golden link. 
Between this life and that beyond the brink, 
" Bound each to each in natural piety," 
Nor let the soul from fear of death to shrink. 



THE disbeliever: XXIII 

Cold and long the night of chaos, ere the morn 
Lighted the star-mist at existence' dawn. 
Long was the star-mist driven by mere Force, 
Ere chaos ended and the Sun was born. 



XXIV 

The stars develop from the driven mist. 
The blazing suns from nebulas subsist. 
The wand' ring planets follow in their train, 
They were not, are, and shall they e'er persist? 



29 



NOTES 



XXV 



Apparently the universally coexistent forces of attraction 
and repulsion, which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in 
all minor changes throughout the universe, also necessitate 
rhythm in the totality of its changes, produce now an immeas- 
urable period during which the attractive forces predominating 
cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period 
during which the repulsive forces predominate, cause universal 
diffusion — alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution. 

Spencer — First Principles. 

XXVI 

And thus there is suggested the conception of a past during 
which there have been successive Evolutions analagous to that 
which is now going on, and a future during which other such 
Evolutions may go on, ever the same in principle, but never 
the same in concrete results. Spencer — First Principles. 

XXVII 

Matter, Motion, Force, are but symbols of the Unknown 
Reality. A Power of which the nature remains forever incon- 
ceivable, and to which no limits in Time or Space can be 
imagined, works in us certain effects. These effects have cer- 
tain likeness of kind, the most general of which are classed 
together under the names of Matter, Motion, and Force. 

Spencer — First Principles. 
30 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XXV 

The moon, that teemed with life, is now a crust. 
And so the stars will change, as all things must, 
Evolve, decay, and crumble back to dust, 
Then shapeless into space again be thrust. 

XXVI 

As often to her purpose it is meet 
Our Mother Nature shall the round repeat; 
And of her large and never weary heart. 
This cycle grand is but a single beat. 

XXVII 

Far beyond the farthermost reach of thought 
The great Unknowable will e'er be sought; 
Eternal Matter and inherent Force 
Have all the tangled web of Nature wrought. 



31 



NOTES 



XXVIII 

The recognition of a persistent Force, ever changing its 
manifestations, but unchanged in quantity throughout all past 
time and all future time, is that which we find alone makes 
possible each concrete interpretation, and at last unifies all con- 
crete interpretations. Spencer — First Principles. 

XXIX 

What but God? 
Inspiring God! who boundless spirit all. 
And unremitting Energy pervades. 
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole. 

Thompson — The Seasons. 

XXX 

We are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a manifesta- 
tion of some Power by which we are acted upon; though 
Omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no 
bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think 
of limits to the presence of this Power, while the criticisms of 
Science teach us that this Power is Incomprehensible. 

Spencer — First Principles. 



32 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XXVIII 

As water holds within its molecule 

The pent-up force of steam, waiting to rule 

The mighty engines of a busy world, 

So Chaos of latent power was full. 

THE doubter: XXIX 

What Power bade this dormant force awake ? 
What Power a future universe bespake ? 
What ! Force existent in the molecule, 
And Life itself of which we all partake ? 

THE DISBELIEVER : XXX 

Though man has learned the tiny atom's weight. 
The volume of the massive earth can state. 
He cannot know the Source of Things /Jffr /<?, 
Nor can he comprehend the Ultimate. 



33 



NOTES 



XXXI 

Of Space and Time we cannot assert limitation or absence 
of limitation. * * * Space and Time are wholly incom- 
prehensible. Spencer — First Principles. 



XXXII 

For a long time after there is consciousness there is no self- 
consciousness. The states and changes of consciousness are not 
known to themselves as constituting a separate entity. * * * 

Spencer — Psychology. 



XXXIII 

The belief that a noise exists objectively as such, that sour- 
ness as tasted similarly inheres in vinegar, and so throughout, 
show us a border region within which subject and object are 
confounded. Spencer — Psychology. 



34 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XXXI 

The birth of Time, the boundaries of Space, 
The fate of man, his final resting-place, — 
The misty Whither and the hazy Whence — 
Are idle fancies of the human race. 



XXXII 

Dame Nature paints in bright and blended hues, 
With skillful brush the quick-dissolving views 
Upon the canvas of the sentient eye, 
And oft the Soul delights on them to muse. 

XXXIII 

The trilling carols of the happy birds. 
Within the heart awake responsive chords, 
Oft Memory plays upon the silver strings, 
While Fancy puts their melody to words. 



35 



NOTES 



XXXIV 

But now Transfigured Realism completes the differentiation 
of subject and object by definitely separating that which belongs 
to the one from that which belongs to the other. It does not 
with Idealism say that the objects exist only as perceived; it 
does not abolish the line of demarkation between subject and 
object, by object with consciousness, but it admits the inde- 
pendent existence of the object as unperceived. 

Spencer — Psychology. 

XXXV 

Our whole universe, from the sands of the seashore to the 
flaming suns that throng the milky way, is built up of sights 
and sounds, of tastes and odors, of pleasures and pains, of sen- 
sations of motion and resistance either felt directly or inferred. 
This is no ghostly universe, but all intensely real as it exists in 
the intensest of realities, the human soul. 

FisKE — From Nature to God. 

XXXVI 

That ceaseless flutter in which the quintessence of conscious 
life consists is kept up by the perpetual introduction of the rela- 
tions of likeness and unlikeness. 

FisKE — From Nature to God. 



36 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XXXIV 



In vain the atmosphere with song was thrilled, 
In vain the air with fragrance sweet was filled, 
The grapes ungarnered dropped from tangled vines, 
Till man, the crown of Nature, was revealed. 

XXXV 

The picture, perfume, nectar, and the song, 
Tho' from without, yet to the soul belong. 
They enter through the open doors of Sense, 
The corridors of Memory to throng. 

XXXVI 

The first thing that the helpless babe must learn. 
Is from Himself the non-self to discern; 
Experience soon his restless hand will teach 
The sparkling fire that tempts will surely burn. 



37 



NOTES 



XXXVII 

Each one of the infinitesimal changes, a little act of discrim- 
ination, a recognition of a unit of feeling as either like or unlike 
some other unit of feeling. Fiske — From Nature to God. 

XXXVIII 

So in the depth of the soul's life the arrangement and re- 
arrangement of units go on, while on the surface the results 
appear from moment to moment in sensations keen or dull, in 
perceptions clear or vague, in judgments wise or foolish, in 
memories pleasant or otherwise, in sordid or lofty trains of 
thought, in gusts of anger or thrills of love. 

FisKE — From Nature to God. 

XXXIX 

The **Spirit" and "Mind" of man are but forces which 
are inseparably connected with the material substance of our 
bodies. Just as the motive force of our flesh is involved in the 
muscular form-element, so is the thinking force of our spirit 
involved in the form-element of the brain. Our spiritual forces 
are as much functions of this part of the body as every force is 
a function of a material body. 

Haeckel — Evolution of Man. 



38 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XXXVII 



The senses teach the e'er receptive brain 
Through many months their lessons to explain, 
Until grown wiser as the years roll by, 
It knows the bird whene'er it hears the strain. 



XXXVIII 

It knows the sweet refrain so well, that soon 
From Memory it makes an echoed tune, 
The sleeping atoms of the brain awake, 
Its gloomy night gives place to splendent noon. 

XXXIX 

How budding sense evolves a flow'ring Soul, 
How that the Mind is born, which holds control 
So long man walks the narrow span of life, 
If it were ever writ, then man has lost the scroll. 



39 



NOTES 



XL 



It is a corrupting doctrine to open a brain, and to tell us 
that devotion is a definite molecular change in this and that 
convolution of gray pulp, and that, if man is the first of living 
animals, he passes away after a short space like the beasts that 
perish. Frederick Harrison — The Soul and Future Life. 

XLI 

During sleep it is incontestable, on the premises that primi- 
tive man has at his disposal, that the spirit sometimes makes 
long journeys, for the sleeper often recollects wandering, hunt- 
ing, or making war in distant countries at a time when his 
companions are perfectly aware that his body has lain motion- 
less. GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 

XLII 

Other analogies are borrowed from the physical fact of the 
shadow cast by the sun; one seems to see the spirit walking 
side by side with the body, and even changing its place while 
the body is motionless. 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 



40 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE DEVOTEE *. XL 

Say not that Love that sings its sweet refrain 
Is but atomic changes in the brain, 
That thinking man is but a wiser brute. 
Dare not thus-wise God's temple to profane. 



THE disbeliever: XLI 

Man often in the fancy of his dreams 

Through phantom forests sailed the shadow streams, 

Whereas his body never left its couch, 

It needs must be himself a double seems. 



XLII 

He sees his face as mirrored in the fount. 
He hears his voice reechoed by the mount, 
The shadow of his body never fails, 
Nor shall himself a shadow spirit want. 



41 



NOTES 



XLIII 

Does not one fairly hear the departure of the breath ani- 
mating a living body, in what one calls the last gasp? * * * 
A sleeping body awakes, it seems to follow that a dead body 
will awake; that is the line of reasoning. 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 

XLIV 

For primate man, to whom all these distinctions, all the 
gradations are impossible, there is but one thing evident, and 
that is the whole of nature lives; and he naturally conceives 
their life on the model of his own, as accompanied by self- 
consciousness, by an intelligence the more astonishing that it is 
mysterious. Guyau — Non- Religion of the Future. 

XLV 

Poetry is often philosophy in its most penetrating form. 
Who has not asked himself sometimes if a puissant and hidden 
spring of life does not circulate unknown to us in the high 
mountain, in the still trees, in the restless ocean, and if mute 
nature does not live in one long course of meditation upon 
themes unknown to us? 

Guyau — Non-Religion of the Future. 



42 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XLIII 

And when at last Sleep's elder brother, Death, 
Lulls him to rest, the last expiring breath 
Shall waft that spirit to the farther land 
To sport again upon a spectral heath. 



XLIV 

The Perfume shows a spirit is innate 
Within the flower, the willing air to sate. 
The rustling leaves are whispers of a Soul, 
To primal man all things are animate. 

XLV 

The gentle winds that fan the throbbing brows 
A kindly spirit only could espouse. 
The angry storms that lash the foaming main 
A hostile demon only could arouse. 



43 



NOTES 



XLVI 

Nature is full of surprises and terrors. * * * In effect 
earth and sky incessantly furnish mankind with new impressions 
capable of stimulating the most torpid imagination, and of 
appealing to the whole round of human and social sensibilities: 
fear, respect, gratitude. 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 

XLVII 

Primus in urbe Deos fecit timor. The first thing that 
introduced a God into the world was fear. Petronius. 

Fear always springs from ignorance. Emerson. 

XLVIII 

The true prayer of the dog consists in licking the hand 
which wounds him. * * * It is almost an example ot 
religious submission; the sentiment which is observable in 
embryo in the dog is the same as that which in its complete 
development appears in the Psalms and the book of Job. 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 



44 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XLVI 

The usual rhythm of the universe 
Disturbs him not, but when unwonted Force, 
Unusual sounds and strange and frightful sights. 
Appall his sense, he fears a demon's curse. 

XLVII 

Then quickly gasps the short and panting breath, 
The quiv'ring heart quails at the thought of death, 
The cringing soul bows to an Unknown Dread, 
For frantic fear is father of man's faith. 



XLVIII 

The cringing cur that crouches 'neath the blow. 
Prays that his master mercy will bestow. 
Yet licks the hand that wields the cruel lash. 
For man is all the god a dog can know. 



45 



NOTES 



XLIX 



If animals tremble before the thunder, it is unlikely that 
primitive man should see nothing in it abnormal and extraor- 
dinary. Similarly the hurricane, which seems like an enor- 
mous respiration, as of a universe out of breath. Similarly 
with the tempest: one knows the Basque proverb, "If you 
want to learn to pray, go to sea." 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 



The living king himself is great, how much greater must be 
the ancestor whom even the king fears and worships, and how 
infinitely greater shall be the ancestor's ancestor, whom the 
ancestor himself revered and worshiped? 

Grant Allen — Evolution of the Idea of God. 

LI 

Throughout the earlier and ruder phases of human evolu- 
tion this primitive conception of ancestors or dead relatives, as 
the chief known objects of worship, survives undiluted: and 
ancestor-worship remains to this day the principal religion of 
the Chinese and of several other peoples. 

Grant Allen — Evolution of the Idea of God. 



46 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XLIX 

When Nature thunders in her darker moods, 
When Hght'nings flash and storm winds bend the woods, 
When quakes the trembHng Earth with craven fear. 
Then calls the awe-struck man upon his gods. 



The chief that here ruled o'er a petty tribe. 
Their phantom laws in ghost-land will prescribe. 
As sinks the sun the shadow longer grows. 
So distant Time doth greater power ascribe. 

LI 

And if on earth one ruled with heavy rod. 
Till all his tribesmen trembled at his nod. 
He burst the bars at death to rule the air. 
The erstwhile man becomes a demi-god. 



47 



NOTES 



LII 

This ethical element, like all other elements in the religion, 
is propitiatory in origin and nature. It begins with fulfillment 
of the wishes or commands of the dead parent, or departed 
chief, or traditional God. There is at first included in the 
ethical element no other duty than that of obedience. 

Spencer. 

LIII 

He maketh a God and worships it. Isaiah 44: 15. 

An honest God is the noblest work of man. 

Robert G. Ingersoll. 

LIV 

None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; 
that as his heart was made for Him so He only can fill it. 
Trench — On the Prodigal Son. 



48 



THE APISTOPHILON 



LII 

As they had groveled to him in the dust 
When but a mortal, now a dreadful Must, 
The fear-born Conscience of a craven heart, 
Compels their souls to pander to his lust. 

LIII 

From Ghost to God is but a narrow span. 
In figment of the fancy both began. 
As man grows wiser, nobler is his God, 
God's but " the shade cast by the Soul of man." 

THE devotee: LIV 

As well to quench the thirst at painted pool. 
Or try the hot and sweaty brow to cool 
In mimic shadow of a pictured wood. 
As satisfy with such a God the soul. 



49 



NOTES 



LV 



The religion of the lower races is almost as a rule one of 
terror and of dread. Their deities are jealous and revengeful, 
cruel, merciless and selfish, hateful and childish. They require 
to be propitiated by feasts and offerings, often even by human 
sacrifices. Lubbock — The Pleasures of Life. 

LVI 

The visiting on Adam's descendants through hundreds of 
generations, dreadful penalties for a small transgression which 
they did not commit, the damning of all men who do not avail 
themselves of an alleged mode of obtaining forgiveness, which 
most men have never heard of; and the effecting a reconcilia- 
tion by sacrificing a son who was perfectly innocent, to satisfy 
the assumed necessity for a propitiatory victim, are modes of 
action which, ascribed to a human ruler, would call forth ex- 
pressions of abhorrence. Spencer — Sociology. 

LVII 

This conflict with what seems an evil environment is, 
therefore, a necessary condition of such evolution. It is not 
too much to say that, without this condition, except for the 
necessity for struggle, man could never have thus emerged, 
would never have risen above the lowest stage. 

Le Conte — Evolution and the Problem of Evil. 



50 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE DISBELIEVER : LV 

How black can be the Curse of Cult that blights! 
The savage pagans practice deadly rites 
To soothe the anger of their Devil-God, 
A God that in the smell of blood delights. 



LVI 

The Christian stole the Devil-God away. 

And bids mankind to love and to obey 

A monster that did glut His cruel thirst 

With His Son's blood, whom He had made men slay! 

Lvn 

The car of Progress bears a heavy load 
From Cult to Culture o'er a rocky road. 
Hard driven by the hand of heartless fate 
We, restive cattle, kick against the goad. 



51 



NOTES 

LVIII 

And Moses spake unto the people saying. Arm ye men 
from among you for the war that they may go against Midian 
to execute the Lord's vengeance on Midian. * * * And 
they warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses; 
and they slew every male. ^ ^ ^ And the children of 
Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones. 

* * ^H Now, therefore, kill every male among the little 
ones, and kill every woman that has known man by lying with 
him. But all the women children that have not known man 
by lying with him keep alive for yourselves. 

Numbers 31: 3, 7, 9, 17, i 8. 

LIX 

And the innumerable passages in which Jehovah is said to 
be jealous of other gods, to be angry, to be appeased, and to 
repent; in which he is represented as casting off Saul because 
the King does not quite literally execute a command of ruthless 
severity, — can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived 
Jehovah not only in the image of man, but in that of a change- 
able, irritable, and occasionally violent man? 

Huxley — Evolution of Theology. 

LX 

There is not a criminal in an European jail, there is not a 
cannibal in the South Sea islands, whose indignation would not 
rise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done. 

* * * The atrocious massacre of the Bulgarians by the 
Turks. * * * Which has left behind the fierce passions 
that produced it, and which may spring up in another murder- 
ous harvest from the soil reeked with blood, and in the air 
tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. 

Gladstone — The Bulgarian Massacre. 
52 



THE APISTOPHILON 



LVIII 

The captive maids of Midian desolate, 
Made orphans by a sword insatiate, 
Bewail the ruthless slaughter of their homes, 
Jehovah's horrid hecatomb of hate. 



LIX 

Where'er the bloody tribes of Israel rove, 
The same dark thread of Death is interwove, 
Jehovah is an echo of their soul, 
Jehovah is no more the God than Jove. 



LX 

The blood-stained Turk now wields the reeking blade, 
For rape and rapine makes his robber raid ; 
Yet bows his head each day in frequent prayers. 
And plies in name of God the Devil's trade. 



53 



NOTES 



LXI 



And when they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, 
Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, 
for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kin- 
dled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error 
and there he died by the ark of God. II Samuel 6:6. 

LXII 

And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel 
and he moved David against them to say. Go, number Israel 
and Judah. * ^ 5}: And David's heart smote him after he 
had numbered the people. H« * * Gad came to David 
and told him. Shall seven years of famine come unto thee or 
wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies or that there 
be three days' pestilence in the land. * H« Hs And David 
said unto Gad, I am in a great strait; let us fall now into the 
hand of the Lord. * ^ ^ So the Lord sent a pestilence 
upon Israel. II Samuel 24:1, 10, 13, 14, 15. 

LXIII 

And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the 
earth, and it grieved Him in His heart. And the Lord said, 
I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the 
earth, both man and beast and the creeping thing and the fowls 
of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 

Genesis 6:6, 7. 

54 



THE APISTOPHILON 



LXI 

When Uzzah tried the shaking ark to save. 
Lest it be dashed against the rolling nave. 
The anger of Jehovah was inflamed. 
And Uzzah got for pay an early grave. 

LXI I 

King David, moved by fierce Jehovah's ire, 
The number of his people to inquire. 
Chose by the self-same God to suffer plague. 
Till even He did of the slaughter tire. 

LXIII 

That He had made the world God did repent, 
And so devised as proper punishment 
To drown His creatures in a raging flood. 
A dying world could not His heart relent. 



55 



NOTES 



LXIV 



For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the 
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and 
fourth generation of them that hate me. Exodus 20: 5. 

For the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God. 

Exodus 24: 13. 

LXV 

No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of 
God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest 
of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of 
nature, no longer moved or sustained by the Spirit of the uni- 
verse, but groaning in its grave; and he mourns, until he him- 
self crumbles away from the dead body. 

RiCHTER — Flower, Fruit and Thorn. 

LXVI 

We are wont to look upon atheism with unspeakable horror 
and loathing. Our moral sense revolts against it no less than 
our intelligence; and this is because on its practical side atheism 
would remove Humanity from its peculiar position in the 
world, and make it cast its lot with the grass that withers and 
the beasts that perish. Fiske — Destiny of Man. 



56 



THE APISTOPHILON 



LXTV 

And shall the world obey the beck and nod 
Of such a cruel, mean, and jealous God, 
Worthy the scorn of every honest man ? 
As soon bend knee before a senseless clod ! 



THE devotee: LXV 

O, ruthless cruelty of Unbelief, 

That creeps up like a velvet-footed thief. 

To steal away the jewel of man's faith. 

And leaves a bankrupt heart to mourn its grief. 



LXVI 

From what a height the noble spirit fell 
To preach the pratings of the Infidel ! 
To flout such mouthings in the face of God 
Is monstrous blasphemy inspired of Hell. 



57 



NOTES 



LXVII 

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such 
an opinion as is unworthy of Him, for the one is unbelief, and 
the other is contumely, and certainly superstition is the reproach 
of the Deity. Bacon — Essays on Superstition. 



LXVIII 

Note also that the loss of beloved beings, misfortunes of 
every sort, and irreparable infirmities all provoke an expansion 
of the heart toward God. 

GuYAU — Non- Religion of the Future. 



LXIX 

It is not without reason that faith has been compared to an 
anchor that has caught on the bottom and checked the vessel in 
its course, while the open and free ocean stretches beyond as 
far as the eye can reach. 

GuYAU — Non- Religion of the Future. 



58 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE disbeliever: LXVII 

But rather he blasphemes that dares impute 

Unto his God so low an attribute. 

Ah, sad it is that even to this day 

The tree of Faith should bear such bitter fruit ! 



THE devotee: LXVIII 

Faith is the anchor of the human ship, 
When sorrow's winds the groaning yard arms strip, 
Else it were dashed on rocks of dark Despair. 
Then cling to Faith, nor let the cable slip. 



the disbeliever: LXIX 

But Faith would check the vessel's onward way. 
Forever anchored in the oozing clay. 
When Reason fires the engine of the Soul 
It stems the storm and cuts the foaming spray. 



59 



NOTES 



LXX 

** For the young birds pipe as the old ones sing." 

Heine. 



LXXI 

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man ; its 
publication a duty. Madame de Stael. 



LXXII 

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profit- 
able for doctrines, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness. II Timothy, 3:16. 

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my 
path. The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth 
understanding unto the simple. Psalm 119: 107, 130. 



60 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE DOUBTER : LXX 

The children to their fathers' faith do cling ! 
And ne'er without due cause as worthless fling 
Aside the teachings of the hallowed past. 
The young birds pipe the note the old ones sing. 



THE DISBELIEVER : LXXI 

Not he that blindly trusts the worn-out creeds, 
But he that follows whither Reason leads 
In search of Truth, has pure religion got. 
The one gleans wheat — the other garners weeds. 



THE devotee: LXXI I 

God did not set the human race adrift 
Without a chart; the Bible was His gift 
To guide the goodly ship mid shoals and reefs, 
Or else it on the sunken rocks would rift. 



6i 



NOTES 

LXXIII 

Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life. John 5: 39. 

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of 
God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know 
them, because they are spiritually discerned. 

I Cor. 2: 14. 

LXXIV 

Thus at last out of the conception of our Bible as a collec- 
tion of oracles — a mass of entangling utterances fruitful in 
wrangling interpretations, which has given to the world long 
and weary ages of **hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness" — 
has been gradually developed through the centuries, by the 
labors, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of a long succession 
of men of God, the conception of it as a sacred literature, * * * 
(a revelation not of the fall of man, but of the ascent of man), 
an exposition, not of temporary dogmas and observances, but of 
the Eternal Law of Righteousness — the one upward path for 
individuals and for nations. 

White — Warfare of Science and Theology. 

LXXV 

The Bible is an unique book, corresponding to a peculiar 
state of mind, and it can no more be made over or corrected 
than a work of Phidias or Praxiteles. In spite of its moral 
lapses and its frequent disaccord with the conscience of our 
epoch, it is a necessary complement of Christianity; it mani- 
fests the spirit of Christian Society, it represents the tradition of 
it, and attaches the beliefs of the present to those of the past. 
GuYAU — Non- Religion of the Future. 
62 



THE APISTOPHILON 



LXXIII 



The key to Life is in God's written word, ^ 
The Doom of Death is in the risen Lord, 
None but the Eye of Faith can see the Truth, 
None but the Ear of Faith can hear its chord. 



THE doubter: LXXIV 

In mystic garb the Bible holds the Truth, 
Tho' its bald facts may seem at times uncouth; 
Its Oriental cast of thought and words 
Were suited to the World's unruly youth. 



THE disbeliever: LXXV 

The Bible has indeed a well-stocked store 
Of marvels, myths, and wondrous legend lore ; 
It does contain some gems of priceless worth 
Gleaned from antiquity, but little more. 



63 



NOTES 



LXXVI 

Jesus Christ, therefore, is Lord to Christians in the same 
sense that Jehovah was Lord to the Hebrews. The usage re- 
ferred to is peculiar, no man — not even Moses or Abraham or 
David, nor any of the prophets or apostles — is ever thus pre- 
vailingly addressed or invoked as Lord. We have but one 
Lord, and Jesus Christ is Lord. 

Hodge — Systematic Theology. 

LXXVII 

Here was the greatest soul of all the sons of men, one 
before whom the majestic mind of Grecian sages and of 
Hebrew seers must veil its face. His perfect obedience made 
Him free. So complete was it but a single will dwelt in Him 
and God, and He could say, I and my Father are one. 

Theodore Parker — Mistakes about Jesus. 

LXXVIII 

Christianity is the most anthropomorphic belief in existence, 
for it is the one of all others which, after having conceived the 
most elevated idea of God, abases it without degrading it to 
the most human of human conditions. By a much more refined, 
much more profound paganism than the paganism of antiquity, 
the Christian religion has succeeded in making God the object 
of ardent love, without ceasing to make Him an object of 
respect. GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 

64 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE devotee: LXXVI 

For us is Christ the Son of God revealed 
From Justice's sword, to be a perfect shield, 
The Man of God that knows our load of grief. 
For with His stripes the sins of men are healed. 

THE DOUBTER : LXXVII 

For us Christ is the God in man revealed. 
Whose Divinity long had been concealed. 
Until the Master brought it to the Light, 
The human race in bonds of love to weld. 

THE disbeliever: LXXVIII 

For us Christ Jesus is the Nazarene, 
Though lowly born yet of a manly mien, 
Who preached against the Jewish Pharisees, 
And sowed the seeds whose harvest we yet glean. 



65 



NOTES 



LXXIX 



St. Augustine, after thirty years of age, and other fathers, bear 
testimony to a sudden enduring and extraordinary change in 
themselves, called conversion. Now this experience has been 
repeated and testified to by countless millions of civilized men 
and women in all nations and all degrees of culture. 

Romanes — Thoughts on Religion. 

LXXX 

I am a Jew, * * * and I persecuted this Way unto death, 
binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. 

* * * And it came to pass that as I made my journey, and 
drew nigh unto Damascus, about noon, suddenly there shone 
from Heaven a great light round about me. And I fell unto 
the ground and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why 
persecutest thou me. * * * And I said. What shall I do. Lord? 

Acts 22: 4, 6, 10. 

LXXXI 

Suggestion has a vast field for its effects; it can be said to 
be as extensive as the nervous system in general, inasmuch as 
all forms of nervous activity can be induced by suggestion. 

* * * Still more important and varied are the efi^ects of sug- 
gestion within the higher psychical life, where thoughts, ideas, 
moods, desires, impulses, and actions can all be ruled by it, 

* * * so that bad habits can be suppressed and depraved char- 
acter can be improved and changed. 

BjoRNsTROM — Hypnotism. 
66 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE devotee: LXXIX 

The proof that Christianity can save 
From Sin on earth and HeJl beyond the grave 
Lies in this fact: That by the Grace of God, 
To honesty it can convert a knave. 



LXXX 

The " old man " is a persecuting Saul, 
The " new man " is a righteous acting Paul, 
For Satan rules no more that happy heart 
That Faith has taught upon its God to call. 

THE DISBELIEVER . LXXXI 

Conversion is suggestion just disguised. 
The " new man " is the " old man " hypnotized. 
Religion is the wand that works the spell! 
And through belief the Devil's exorcised! 



67 



NOTES 



LXXXII 

Has every suffering, searching soul which ever gazed up into 
the darkness of the unknown, in hope of catching even a 
glimpse of a divine eye beholding all and ordering all and pity- 
ing all, gazed up in vain ? * * * Oh, my friends, those who 
believe or fancy they believe such things must be able to do so 
only through some peculiar confirmation of brain or heart. 
KiNGSLEY — Westminster Sertnons. 

LXXXIII 

It is a doctrine dear to the heart of mankind, that through 
prayer we can hold communion with the source of all, receive 
revelations from the very God, and be inspired by Him. New 
truth, new revelation, flows into us. We make His thought 
our thought. Theodore Parker — Sermons. 

LXXXIV 

The belief in this intercourse with our Father rises spontane- 
ous in the simple heart of Childhood, and, as instinctive trust, 
swells outward in the new-born soul. In primitive nations of 
the world's history the same intuitive trust appears. In all 
forms of religion you find this. It meets you with the savage 
and civilized, in all states of progress; in all degrees of growth 
in religion — that of fear, of hope, and of love. 

Theodore Parker — Sermons. 



68 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE devotee: LXXXII 

Prayer is the pleading of the weary soul 
The load of Sin from off the heart to roll; 
Prayer is the plea to kindly Providence 
To give, to guide, to guard, and to control. 

THE doubter: LXXXIII 

The windows of the soul are open thrown 

By prayer, through which are cooling breezes blown 

To bathe the brows of heavy-burdened man. 

To bear the blessings wafted from God's throne. 

LXXXIV 

A grain of incense burns in ev'ry heart. 
And when its perfume forms no more a part 
Of life on earth, it swiftly mounts to Heaven, 
As eager arrows to the target dart. 



69 



NOTES 



LXXXV 



Prayer may be an almost mechanical accomplishment of the 
rite, the babbling of vain words, and as such it is despicable, 
even from the point of religion. It may be an egoistic demand, 
and as such is simply mean. 

GuYAU — Non- Religion of the Future. 

LXXXVI 

The mediaeval Lord, vi^ho, after having killed the next of 
kin, rears a chapel to some saint, the hermit who lacerates his 
chest in order to avoid the more redoubtable pangs of hell, 
reason from precisely the same fashion as my dog, they are 
endeavoring to conciliate their judge, and to be quite frank, to 
corrupt him, for superstition rests in a great measure upon the 
belief that it is possible to corrupt God. 

GuvAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 

LXXXVII 

It is always dangerous to believe that one possesses a power 
that one has not, for it hinders in some degree from knowing 
and exercising those one has. 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 



70 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE disbeliever: LXXXV 

Both time and force are lost in useless prayer 
As blows that beat upon the empty air, 
A senseless babble or a heartless rite 
Cannot for work or weal the soul prepare. 

LXXXVI 

And why should man in praying waste his days 
Or spend his breath in singing fulsome praise 
Must God be flattered into doing right ? 
He worships best that duty most obeys. 

LXXXVI I 

To hold that Nature's fixed and stable power 

Is changed thro' prayer is wrong. When comes the hour 

Of Trial, man will be left in impotence 

And new-born Grief shall all his strength devour. 



71 



NOTES 



LXXXVIII 
Self-conquest is the greatest of victories. Plato. 

LXXXIX 

They that deny a God destroy man's nobility, for cer- 
tainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not 
of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. 

Bacon — Essays on Atheism. 

XC 

Cares not a pin what they said or may say. Pope. 



72 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE doubter: LXXXVIII 

That heart becomes an easy prey to Sin 

Whose morals from mere priest-born dogmas spring. 

When fails his creed, then falls integrity; 

Better a Soul hard trained by discipline. 



THE devotee: LXXXIX 

Such words as these deserve but ridicule : 
"There is no God" — the motto of the fool. 
The boy that cons his lessons day by day 
Must know a Master keeps earth's greater school. 

THE boy: XC 

Give me but time to spin my whirling top. 
Give me a place to run, to jump, to hop. 
What do I care for all your useless words ^ 
Give me but room to play and never stop! 



73 



NOTES 



XCI 



The keynote of the universe is joy, and every theory of 
destiny must harmonize with it. * * -1^ We base our 
proof, however, not on mere analogy, but on the simple 
ground that the nature of the soul demands a proper and 
answering sphere, as wings demand air and fish water. 

MuNGER — The Freedom of Faith. 

XCII 

As the hart panteth after the water-brook, so panteth my 
soul after thee, oh God. Psalms 42:1. 

Thou art what I want; 
I am athirst for God, the living God. 

Jean Ingelow. 

XCIII 

What is there in man so worthy of honor and reverence as 
this: that he is capable of contemplating something higher than 
his own reason, more sublime than the whole universe; that 
spirit which alone is self-subsistent, from which all truth pro- 
ceeds, without which there is no truth. Jacobi. 



74 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE devotee: XCI 

Life is a dirge that drones its doleful feet 
In time to heart that throbs its sorry beat. 
Life IS a song with scarce a note of cheer. 
Be there no Heaven to make this life complete. 



XCII 

Blooms all in vain for me the budding morn, 
The Rose of Life bears but the prickly thorn, 
My orphaned Spirit moans its life away 
If from my heart the Love of God is torn. 

XCIII 

For me the full blown day no fragrance sheds, 
For me the sun a sombre pall o'erspreads. 
For me the brightest day is sad and drear, 
If God the Father be not overhead. 



75 



NOTES 



XCIV 



Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them 
shall not fall on the ground without your Father? 

Mark io: 29. 

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil 
not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field which to-day 
is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much 
more clothe you, O ye of little faith. 

Matthew 6: 28-30. 

xcv 

Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evi- 
dence of things not seen. Hebrews i i : i . 

The just shall live by faith. ' Romans 1:17. 

XCVI 

I cannot believe and cannot be brought to believe, that 
the purpose of our creation is fulfilled by our short existence 
here. To me the existence of another world is a necessary 
supplement of this to adjust its inequalities and imbue it with 
moral significance. Thurlow Weed. 



76 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XCIV 

And if God clothes the lilies of the field 
With raiment fair, and if no sparrow yield 
Its life but that the Father knows its fall, 
Shall not He then His trusting children shield? 

xcv 

I had much rather walk with God at night 
Than stroll alone within the brightest light. 
I'd rather lean on God than stand alone; 
'Tis better far to walk by Faith than sight. 

XCVI 

And if this infant Life of ours is all, 
And if there be but Naught beyond the pall. 
If longings for the After-life be vain, 
Fate holds our spirits in a bitter thrall ! 



77 



NOTES 



XCVII 



The question, then, is reduced to this: Are man's highest 
spiritual qualities, into the production of which all this creative 
energy has gone, to disappear with the rest? Has all this work 
been done for nothing? Is it all ephemeral, all a bubble that 
bursts, a vision that fades? are we to regard the Creator's work 
as like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks just for 
the pleasure of knocking them down? 

FisKE — Destiny of Man. 

XCVIII 

I had rather believe all the fables of the Legend and the 
Talmud and the Alcoran than that this universal frame is with- 
out a mind: and therefore God never wrought a miracle to 
convince atheism, because His ordinary works convinceth. It 
is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, 
but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. 

Bacon — Essays on Atheism. 

XCIX 

The design argument is wholly grounded on experience. 
Certain qualities, it is alleged, are found to be characteristic of 
such things as are made by an intelligent mind for a purpose. 
The order of nature, or some considerable parts of it, exhibit 
this quality in a remarkable degree. 

John Stuart Mill — Religion. 
78 



THE APISTOPHILON 



XCVII 



Fill to the brim the cup of fierce desire, 
For freezing man light up the craved-for fire, 
Then quench the flame, and dash the cup to earth, 
But burn not hope on such a dismal pyre ! 

XCVIII 

'Tis strange that men could ever be such fools 
As not to know a Joiner by his tools ; 
Could spell the story of the Universe, 
Could learn its laws, and overlook Who rules ! 

XCIX 

More strange so keen an Eye were yet so blind 
As not to see in earth a thing designed ; 
Can Wisdom think the Mighty Worlds in Space 
All came by Chance as listless as the Wind ? 



79 



NOTES 



We are entitled, from the great similarity in its effects, to 
infer similarity in the cause, and to believe that things which it 
is beyond the power of man to make, but which resemble 
works of man in all but power, must also have been made by 
Intelligence, armed with a power greater than human. 

John Stuart Mill — Religion. 

CI 

Seeing the snake cast its old slough and glide forth renewed, 
he conceives so in death, man but sheds his fleshy exuviae, 
while the spirit emerges regenerate. He beholds the beetle 
break from its filthy sepulcher and commence its summer work, 
and straightway he hangs a golden scarabasus in the temples as 
an emblem of a future life. 

Alger — Doctrine of a Future Life. 

CII 

Indeed, most of the analogies from our daily observation 
of the laws of the physical universe lead inevitably to the con- 
clusion that "if a man dies he does not live again." For it is 
a fact within the experience of the most superficial observer 
that Nature constantly follows the one routine — birth, growth, 
maturity, decay, death. 

Hudson — Demonstration of a Future Life. 



So 



THE APISTOPHILON 



The globe, that stands within the college hall, 
A tiny image of this earthly ball. 
Though but a copy, was designed by Man ; 
Did no one make the globe original ? 

THE DOUBTER *. CI 

Nature herself a future life foretells; 
In chrysalis the sleeping pupa dwells. 
The transformed worm will rise a butterfly; 
The seed when sown a greater harvest swells. 

THE disbeliever: CII 

Though worm and grub the dragon-fly precede, 
The new-born fly must still repeat the breed; 
So Nature turns the Wheel of Life around ; 
The germ that dies is not the garnered seed. 



8i 



NOTES 



cm 

For verily I say unto you, till Heaven and earth shall pass 
away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, 
till all be fulfilled. Matthew 5:18. 



CIV 

Many erroneous beliefs of that character have their origin 
in the defective development of the understanding, such as is 
natural to savages and children. Witness, for example, the 
superstitions of ill omens which have so strong a hold on bar- 
barous peoples, and indeed are not extinct in the most enlight- 
ened communities. Maudsley — Body and Will. 



CV 

For if the universal law of gravitation is the Divine mode 
of the sustention of the universe, the no less universal law of 
evolution is the Divine process of creation. 

Le Conte — Evolution. 



83 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE devotee: cm 

What all men everywhere have always thought 
Is right. The Faith for which our fathers fought, 
The God of Truth, the Word, Eternal Life, 
Cannot through juggling logic shrink to Naught. 



THE DISBELIEVER : CIV 

The childhood of mankind had childish fears 
And foolish fancies fit for fickle years ; 
But ghost and goblin, witch and demon, sprite 
And fairy, no one any more reveres. 



CV 

The sinuous stream that swiftly seaward glides, 
Hemmed in with hills that hedge its verdant sides. 
Along the line of least resistance flows; 
The law of gravitation thus provides. 



83 



NOTES 



CVI 



The old argument from design in Nature as given by Paley, 
which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that 
the law of selection has been discovered. We can no longer 
argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell 
must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of 
a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the 
variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selec- 
tion, than in the course which the wind blows. 

Darwin — Life and Letters. 

CVII 

Whatever additional factors may be added to natural selec- 
tion — and Darwin himself fully admitted that there might be 
others — the theory of an evolution process in the formation of 
the universe and of animate nature is established, and the old 
theory of direct creation is gone forever. 

White — Warfare of Science and Theology. 

cvm 

Evolution as a process is not confined to one thing, the 
cgg» nor as a doctrine is it confined to one department of 
science, biology. The process pervades the whole universe, 
and the doctrine concerns alike every department of science — 
yea, every department of human thought. 

Le Conte — Evolution. 
84 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CVI 

The line of least resistance is the groove 
In which all things in Nature ever move. 
Self-acting and impelled by Force to act ; 
Does vibrant matter a Designer prove ? 

CVII 

Though long this crucial question was revolved. 
By careful study man the problem solved ; 
" Special creation " is a myth of Cult, 
All things are slowly step by step evolved. 

CVIII 

This key doth secrets of the World unlock, 
This Truth is stamped upon the solid rock, 
Urania wrote the story in the stars, 
None but a dolt such evidence could mock. 



85 



NOTES 



CIX 

Thus identical in physical processes by which he originated 
— identical in the early stages of his formation — identical in 
the mode of his nutrition before and after birth with the ani- 
mals which lie immediately below him in the scale — man, if 
adult and perfect structure be compared to others, exhibits, as 
might be expected, a marvelous likeness of organization. 

Huxley — Man's Place in Nature. 

CX 

And it is also much more to my individual taste to be the 
more highly developed descendant of a primal ape ancestor, who, 
in the struggle for existence, had developed progressively from 
lower mammals, as they from still lower vertebrates, than to be 
the degraded descendant of Adam, God-like, but debased by 
the fall, who was formed from a clod of earth, and of Eve, 
created from a rib of man. Haeckel — Evolution of Man. 

CXI 

It may be metaphorically said, that natural selection is daily 
and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest varia- 
tion; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all 
that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and 
wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic 
being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. 
We see nothing of these slow changes in progress until the hand 
of time has marked the lapse of ages, and so imperfect is our 
view into long past geological ages, that we see only that the 
forms of life are now different from what they formerly were. 

Darwin — Origin of Species. 

86 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CIX 

Man's embryonic life the story tells, 

How rose the race from out primordial cells; 

His upward course is an epitome 

Of ev'ry kind of Life on earth that dwells. 

CX 

This truth of science, the Descent of man — 
The crown that caps great Darwin's noble plan- 
Proclaims a gospel born of proven fact 
That kills the curse that comes of Adam's ban. 

CXI 

The abler to the wall the weaker drives. 
The fittest tree best in the forest thrives ; 
In the struggle for existence this is true: 
" What survives is fit, what is fit survives." 



87 



NOTES 



CXII 



Est profecto Deus qui qus gerimus auditque et videt. 
There is indeed a God that hears and sees whatever we do. 

Plautus. 

CXIII 

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; 
even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the 
other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no 
pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one 
place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. 

EcCLESIASTES 3:19, 20. 

CXIV 

Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. 

Luke 12: 19. 
Wine that maketh glad the heart of man. 

Psalms 104: 15. 
Sublime tobacco, which from East to West 
Cheers the tar's labor or the Turk man's rest. 

Byron — The Island. 



88 



THE APISTOPHILON 



THE devotee: CXI I 

Not for the nonce the clock of Time was wound, 
Nor did the Lord fall into sleep profound 
And wait eternal morn, for e'er His eye 
Keeps vigil, and His ear hears ev'ry sound. 

THE disbeliever: CXIII 

Hedged in with barriers of frowning height. 
With neither source nor misty end in sight. 
The stream of Life flows in its winding maze 
To seek the self-same Sea whence came its might. 

CXIV 

Who deems it wrong to quaff the ruby wine. 
Who burns no incense at Nicotia's shrine. 
Who robs his plate to feed a hungry church. 
Would make the song of Life a dismal whine. 



89 



NOTES 



CXV 

O love, young love, bound in thy rosy band. 
Let sage or cynic prattle as he will. 
These hours, and only these, redeem life's years of ill. 

Byron — Childe Harold. 



CXVI 

I sat down under his shadow with great delight. And his 
fruit was sweet to my taste. Song of Songs 2: 14. 

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love 
is better than wine. Song of Songs i : 2. 



CXVII 

The pleasure of love is in loving. We are happier in the 
passion we feel than in what we inspire. 

Rochefoucauld — Maxims. 



90 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CXV 

Ah, give me Love that ever smiling gleams, 
That from the Dark this cheerless world redeems. 
Ah, may my Moon of Love forget to wane, 
And light me ever with its lambent beams. 

CXVI 

Love bears a fruit far sweeter than the Vine, 
Love brews a nectar that surpasses Wine ; 
But who can tell the Soul's o'erwhelming bliss 
When Vine and Love the willing heart entwine. 

CXVI I 

How cling the tendrils of their fond caress 
As to the lips the luscious cup they press ! 
Ah, I could drink and drain the vintage dry 
And die in arms of loving tenderness! 



91 



NOTES 



CXVIII 

Love, pleasant as it is, pleases even more by the ways in 
which it shows itself than by itself. 

Rochefoucauld — Maxims. 



CXIX 

Come, come; good wine is a good familiar creature, if it 
be well used; exclaim no more against it. 

Shakespeare — Othello. 



cxx 

He who forsakes God for a greater liberty is like a babe lost 
from its mother. They who refrain from God for the sake of 
pleasure are like men running from the free air to seek sunlight 
amid shadows and darkness. They who withdraw from God 
that they may have wider circuit of power are like birds that 
forsake the forest and fly within the fowler's cage to find a 
larger bound and wider liberty. Beecher. 



92 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CXVIII 



The wine that sparkles and the merry song, 
The Queen of Love that rules the happy throng, 
The dainty Dancers and the pleasing play — 
All sweets of life — are all such pleasures wrong ? 

CXIX 

And why need Virtue wear so sour a mien ? 

And cry — when Pleasures come — " Unclean, unclean " ? 

The sin of Pleasure is excess alone; 

'Tis the abuse that doth the man demean. 



THE DEVOTEE : CXX 

The glutton, drunkard, and the libertine 
Such sentiments as these would gladly glean. 
From sensual pleasures of the Appetite 
Naught but the Grace of God the soul can wean. 



93 



NOTES 



CXXI 

Murder most foul, as in the best it is. 
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. 

Shakespeare — Hamlet. 



CXXII 

Faith is a higher faculty than reason. 

Bailey — Festus. 

Unbelief is blind. Milton. 

CXXIII 

So, too, must die out the belief that a Power, present in 
innumerable worlds throughout space, and during millions of 
years of the earth's earlier existence needed no honoring by its 
inhabitants, should be seized with a craving for praise; and hav- 
ing created mankind, should be angry with them should they 
not perpetually tell him how great he is. 

Spencer — Sociology . 



94 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CXXI 

To murder Faith Is Satan's blackest art ; 

To force my soul from Christ its Lord to part, 

To wander in the waste of Unbelief 

Would wring the life-blood from my wretched heart. 

CXXII 

For gold of Faith what give you man instead ? 
The dross of so-called Science ? Better dead 
Than live in wicked Infidelity! 
How could the hunger of the soul be fed ! 

THE disbeliever: CXXIII 

And why must man a phantom God adore 

In willful waste his love libation pour, 

And spend in vain his time and wealth and lore, 

When burdened man has need of them much more? 



95 



NOTES 



CXXIV 

Superstition is a senseless fear of God. Cicero. 

CXXV 

A sentiment of submission to the decrees of Providence, who 
is destiny personified, has been the excuse of every form of 
indolence, of every cowardly adherence to custom. * * But 
efficiency to aid oneself demands initiative and audacity, and a 
spirit of revolt against an unwelcome course of things; efficiently 
to aid oneself one must not say, "God's will be done," but, 
"My will be done." 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 

CXXVI 

I find no evidence that seriously militates against the rule 
that the priest at all times and in all places is the enemy of all 
men. Sacerdos semper ubique et omnibus inimicus. 

Clifford — Ethics of Religion. 



96 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CXXIV 

And when the Surgeon with the skillful knife 
Has cut the cancer to preserve the life, 
Puts he aught in its place ? Theology 
Is such a growth with Superstition rife. 

cxxv 

Religion tends to raise a weakly breed. 
For self-reliance substitutes a reed, 
It makes the Faithful lean upon his God, 
And dubs it Sin to by one's self succeed. 

CXXVI 

It puts its priests upon despotic thrones. 

It builds its churches from hard quarried stones. 

Palatial prisons of man's Liberty. 

It swarms the hive with non-producing drones. 



97 



NOTES 



CXXVII 



But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast 
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last. 

Thomas Moore — Lalla Rookh. 

Ignorance is the mother of devotion. Jeremy Taylor. 



CXXVIII 

With devotion's visage. 
And pious action, we do sugar o'er 
The devil himself 

Shakespeare — Hamlet. 

CXXIX 

It was physical fear, timor, and not moral reverence, which 
gave being to the first gods. * * * The germ of immorality, 
therefore, not less than of morality, lies at the root of every reli- 
gion. * * * One may verify in every religion what is observed 
in Christianity, that the truly moral God is precisely the man- 
God, Jesus, whereas God, the Father, who pitilessly sacrifices 
his own son, is anti-human and immoral, precisely in that he is 
superhuman. Guyau — Non-Religion of the Future. 



98 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CXXVII 



Within its fane there dwells the Sycophant, 
It is the swamp whence oozes whining Cant, 
There rankly grows the weed of bigotry 
Whose dark shade keeps the people ignorant. 

CXXVII I 

Its Votary oft fills a craven part, 
However may his restive conscience smart 
To basely play the smooth-tongued Hypocrite, 
He must with iron dogmas bind his heart. 

CXXIX 

No wrong is right, no matter from what view, 
Nor straight is that that has been built askew, 
As bends the twig so grows the tree. Religion 
Immoral is, because it is not true. 



99 



NOTES 



CXXX 

The absorption of religion into morality is one with the 
dissolution of all positive and determinate religion, of all tradi- 
tional symbolism, and all dogmatism. Faith, said Heraclitus, 
is a sacred malady, iepd voaoq. For us moderns it is no longer 
a sacred malady, and it is one from which all of us wish to be 
delivered at last. 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 

CXXXI 

At some certain moment in its history it (religion) falls of 
its own weight with the disappearance of the pretended evi- 
dences on which it was resting; it does not, properly speaking, 
die; it ceases simply — becomes extinct. It will cease defi- 
nitely when it shall have become useless, and there is no longer 
obligation to replace what is no longer necessary. 

GuYAU — Non-Religion of the Future. 

CXXXII 

A living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living 
know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything, 
neither have they any more reward; for the memory of them 
is forgotten. Ecclesiastes 9: 45. 

Whatsoever thy hand find to do, do it with thy might, for 
there is no work, no device, nor knowledge in the grave, 
whither thou goest. Ecclesiastes 9:10. 

100 



THE APISTOPHILON 



cxxx 



From Rites to Reason e'er the race proceeds 
With measured tread unless crass Faith impedes. 
Morality's right conduct of the soul, 
Religion's but conformity to Creeds. 

CXXXI 

Religion's part on earth was to police 
Unruly people for the sake of peace, 
But since mankind no longer needs its guard, 
'Tis time that Reason bid its burdens cease. 

CXXXII 

'Tis natural the heart should yearn to live 
Again, and cling to all that Faith can give 
To light the dark Unknown, but all in vain. 
Religious Hope sips nectar from a sieve. 



NOTES 



CXXXIII 

The law of evolution holds of the inner world as it does of 
the outer world. On tracing up from its low and vague begin- 
ning the intelligence which becomes so marvelous in the high- 
est beings, we find that under whatever aspect contemplated, 
it presents a progressive transformation of like nature with the 
progressive transformation we trace in the Universe as a whole, 
no less than each of its parts. Spencer — Psychology. 

CXXXIV 

The human brain is an organized register of infinitely 
numerous experiences. H^ * ^ic -yj^g eiFects of the most 
uniform and frequent of these experiences have been succes- 
sively bequeathed, principal and interest; and have slowly 
amounted to that high intelligence which lies latent in the brain 
of the infant — which the infant in after life exercises and per- 
haps strengthens and further complicates — and which with 
minute additions it bequeaths to future generations. 

Spencer — Psychology. 

cxxxv 

Each unprejudiced and searching test applied to the action 
of our ''free will" shows that the latter is never really free, 
but is always determined by previous causal conditions, which 
are eventually referable either to heredity or to adaptation. 

Haeckel — Evolution of Man. 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CXXXIII 

Without our will we into life were thrust, 
Against our wish we die and turn to dust, 
Ourselves, our thoughts, our hopes, beliefs, and fears 
Are restless children of a mighty Must. 

CXXXIV 

As we have sown, so shall we also reap. 
So shall our children laugh or shall they weep. 
We garner what our fathers long have strewn. 
For deeds, like seeds, a close resemblance keep. 

cxxxv 

Five sextants of the Round of life are ruled 
By Nature, and the sixth by Nurture 's schooled. 
Heredity transmits from sire to son 
The trends and traits that usage stronger molds. 



103 



NOTES 



CXXXVI 



The will is not determined by motive, but by cause — that 
is to say, by the sum of conditions, passive and active, on which 
the event follows; in other words, it has antecedents, not only 
the motives of which we are conscious, but the motive energies 
that are active below the threshold of consciousness. 

Maudsley — Body and Will. 



CXXXVII 

All the forces at work there can be reduced at last to 
growth — to the fundamental function of evolution, by which 
the forms of inorganic as well as organic bodies originate. 

Haeckel — Evolution of Man. 



CXXXVIII 

No action, whether foul or fair. 
Is ever done but it leaves somewhere 
A record, written by fingers ghostly. 
As a blessing or a curse. 

LoNGFELLO w — Christus . 



104 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CXXXVI 



Strive e'er so hard with e'er so patient skill 
To make your world to answer to your will, 
But little will your efforts change the Must, 
Relentless Fate will shape the outcome still. 

CXXXVI I 

And yet that Little makes the All of gain. 
And breeds a better brawn and brighter brain. 
To-day's " I will " to-morrow is " I must," 
A self-wrought link in Life's predestined chain. 

CXXXVI 1 1 

There blows no breeze but scatters far the down, 
That shall some distant field with verdure gown. 
Be harvest weed or plant, the crop is sure. 
And thus our deeds are ever widely sown. 



los 



NOTES 



CXXXIX 

No act of a man, no thing (how much less the man him- 
self), is extinguished when it disappears, through considerable 
time it still works, though done and vanished. Carlyle. 



1 06 



THE APISTOPHILON 



CXXXIX 

Then cultivate the plants and cut the weeds, 
And grow a crop of Worth from noble deeds, 
So when the Harvest of our Life is gleaned 
The World shall profit, for we sowed good seeds. 



107 



EPILOGUE 



An atom in immensity, a moment in eternity, a single 
pulse, so to speak, in the flux of life upon earth, man cannot 
transcend the narrow limits of his small capacity; can only 
reflect in knowledge more or less adequately the minute spot 
of space, the brief moment of time, in which he is, can know 
little more in the end than how little it is that he can ever 
know, how infinitely much he can never know. 

Maudsley — Body and Will. 



108 



Epilogue 



So long I parry arguments with skill, 
And pros and cons consider at my will. 
The great Enigma that e'er racks the brain 
Cannot be solved by man, until — until ? 



109 



PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 
AND SONS COMPANY AT THE 
LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 



NOV 3 1899 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



015 906 044 5 



